I hope everyone had a restful Holiday Season, and as I emerge from the launch of Offerpop for Facebook (see some of our press coverage here) I wanted to share a few thoughts and a snazzy new graphic on where I see social marketing headed in 2011. In a way,... Continue reading

Curious how some others compare? Here's 4 more vendors I just scored:
Lyzasoft (collaborative BI): 19
ZohoReports: 23
Baynote (social search): 33 (Social Climber)
Informatica: 103 - would be new leader (Social Maven)
and for kicks I did WebTrends as well, who not surprisingly were off the charts with a crazy number of blog posts/comments and a solid Twitter score as well.

update (Oct 13): I just evaluated a few addtional vendors. For now see those scores in the comments below and I hope to do an updated graphic shortly. Additional suggestions and feedback welcome! As a follow-up to my previous post on how socially active the leading CRM and SBS vendors are ...

Hi Seth - Thanks for stopping by and your suggestion! Spotfire is a great addition. I ran their numbers and they'd score a 72. Ahead of Cognos, and solidly in 'Mavens' group, but still #6 overall out of 16. You are spot on RE their blogging - they had the most posts in May/June/July (3 more than SAS), but relatively few blog comments (only 0.14 comments per post). They also have good but not great scores on Twitter.
Now that I'm doing updates 'real-time' any other vendors folks want me to score?
Allen

update (Oct 13): I just evaluated a few addtional vendors. For now see those scores in the comments below and I hope to do an updated graphic shortly. Additional suggestions and feedback welcome! As a follow-up to my previous post on how socially active the leading CRM and SBS vendors are ...

update (Oct 13): I just evaluated a few addtional vendors. For now see those scores in the comments below and I hope to do an updated graphic shortly. Additional suggestions and feedback welcome! As a follow-up to my previous post on how socially active the leading CRM and SBS vendors are ...

update (Oct 13): I just evaluated a few addtional vendors. For now see those scores in the comments below and I hope to do an updated graphic shortly. Additional suggestions and feedback welcome! As a follow-up to my previous post on how socially active the leading CRM and SBS vendors... Continue reading

Hi John - great post and real nice summary of some of the key elements of a COE, which can be a very helpful structure when scaling up tech+people driven corp initiatives. Here are a few other pieces/techniques I've used when rolling these out:
For early discovery and helping with the 'order' and consensus building, I like starting with a mission statement for enterprise social.
For measures and KPI, start with a mix of tactical and highly measurable metrics like traffics/clicks and more 'value-add' but harder to measure ones like lifetime customer value.
For aligning the vision and promoting a common language (key to working across different orgs IMO), establish or adapt a maturity model to show 'we are here' and 'we are going HERE' - for an example see http://blog.offerpop.com/?p=23.
Again, really enjoyed the post, and thanks for allowing me to share a few additional ideas - would love your thoughts!
Allen

There seems to be a shared experience among big brands as they advance along their use of social media. many are quite sophisticated in terms of the programs they are deploying from social customer care to alternative marcom programs to B2B lead generation. Many start by hiring the one "social m...

I just published an update with scores for 6 additional vendors (and also looked at how the leading email marketing providers would rank as well). Check it out here: http://bit.ly/9YI56q and keep the comments coming!
Allen

I’ve focused a lot of my attention over the past year on the emergence of B2C social media marketing, how various social channels compare, and what capabilities are needed to evolve from simple outreach to engagement and ultimately conversion (selling more stuff) via social campaigns – see my ...

Joseph - thanks for the read and comment! I agree that B2B (and even B2C) SM tools are in their infancy. In fact if you look at what is available for email marketing, SM has a long way to go.
And you're right that the highest scoring vendors in this study generally have a better mix of how-to info, best practices, featured experts vs just pushing out product announcements. I think this mix is key, just as other media channels have settled into a mix of 70-90% 'content' vs 10-30% 'ads.'
Allen

I’ve focused a lot of my attention over the past year on the emergence of B2C social media marketing, how various social channels compare, and what capabilities are needed to evolve from simple outreach to engagement and ultimately conversion (selling more stuff) via social campaigns – see my ...

Great question - and I agree the survey answers are pretty honest & telling.
When I have my consultant's hat on, I would favor a more strategic approach to social media/marketing/commerce driven by lots of discussions, discovery, benchmarking, a proper mission, practical KPIs and roadmap etc. But as you point out not everyone is on-board with this level of commitment or investment. Interestingly I find that customer service organizations and those that have invested in online support and self-service efforts are more likely to be open to this approach vs. marketing folks.
Of course I also wear a marketing hat myself (at Offerpop), and given everything on my plate - and the fact that our product actually is a platform for social marketing - I tend to fall back into tactical mode in practice! As long as your social marketing programs are guided by some best practices and frameworks like our maturity model (see http://blog.offerpop.com/?p=23), AND you track KPIs and make adjustments, I think a (mostly) tactical approach can work pretty well - at least when starting out or when you are part of small-ish org.
What do you think?
Allen

There was a revealing poll put out recently by the Smart Blog on Social Media. It asked: Does your company have a formal, written social-media strategy? Here are the main results: No, but we’re getting around to it 32.73% No, and we probably won’t write one anytime soon 27.64% Yes, and it’s real...

Mike - thanks for stopping by and I look forward to seeing some of the new programs you are launching.
and Hi Lauren - it sounds like a great idea to combine some of the collaboration posts (from Wikinomics blog I assume?) with your CIM content. In fact a mix of commentary, how-to info, case studies and even news summaries makes for a nice variety of blog content - and multiple 'hooks' to draw readers and comments IMO.
As for your question about shared quality of top scorers in this study, I'd say they have both a strong cross-channel focus (promoting Twitter on email/Web, blog on Twitter, etc) + active programs to recruit new fans/followers AND a good frequency/variety (guest bloggers, topics I mentioned above etc) of content. And given my experience launching the blog at eVergance and now at Offerpop, I think there is a bit of old-fashioned outreach to friends/colleagues/influencers to read and post comments to 'seed' the discussion.
Hope this is helpful + happy to share more ideas!
Allen

I’ve focused a lot of my attention over the past year on the emergence of B2C social media marketing, how various social channels compare, and what capabilities are needed to evolve from simple outreach to engagement and ultimately conversion (selling more stuff) via social campaigns – see my ...

I’ve focused a lot of my attention over the past year on the emergence of B2C social media marketing, how various social channels compare, and what capabilities are needed to evolve from simple outreach to engagement and ultimately conversion (selling more stuff) via social campaigns – see my recent guest... Continue reading

Last time I looked at the role of Collective Intelligence in Social CRM, and the relationship of these models to managing the growing volumes of user-generated content - and delivering more relevant and timely information at the point of service interaction, or purchasing decision or search. In a way that... Continue reading

Hi Bill - great post and topic. As someone who started in corp R&D I think there is amazing potential here. And crowd-sourced innovation (like Innocentive and the like) is pretty exciting. To me challenges are balancing broad participation with structure, trust models (related to IP point I guess), and finding beachhead applications to show value. Also I agree with Gavin's point that it's just not about tools - but rather culture and incentives...and recognition: e.g., who gets the patent? the team lead, or the community ;-)
Allen
http://twitter.com/abonde

As enterprise 2.0 matures, its uses are getting more focused. I have been hearing more about it use in product development. Here is a timely Forrester report on the topic, Use Social Computing To Build Diﬀerentiated Product Development Processes by Roy C. Wildeman. As the summary states, “in re...

Thanks for the read and comment! I totally agree that technology is PART of the solution, but that the old people and process parts are equally if not more important to move the views of the group into actionable (approved) chunks that can be digested by the business. My view, formed from a number of years doing work in the KM space is that you have to "think globally, act locally" - and define very specific tasks/processes/metrics where you aim to gather and apply knowledge (CI). Interestingly, I think what you are saying about CI also applies to applying social media models in general in the enterprise, esp. for core processes. Part of this is managing finer-grained trust models. But as I'm sure you agree, it is just hard to handle and apply diverse, structured and unstructured information at scale - especially when you run into established processes, systems, culture etc.

The topic of Social CRM – what it is, how it differs from Web 2.0, how to get stated etc – remains a hot topic (see here and here and here). Yet, from my viewpoint, there has been a lot less discussion about one of the core mechanisms that puts the “Social” in Social CRM: Collective Intelligenc...

The topic of Social CRM – what it is, how it differs from Web 2.0, how to get stated etc – remains a hot topic (see here and here and here). Yet, from my viewpoint, there has been a lot less discussion about one of the core mechanisms that puts... Continue reading

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately looking at Twitter as a customer service and marketing channel (see my latest SearchCRM column here). Especially since I recently joined the founding team of a new social marketing apps start-up, Offerpop, to extend and leverage the work I have been doing... Continue reading

It was great to see a number of old and new friends at our Social Media Roundtable at HP this week. Thanks again to Gautam (check out Actute's BIRT community here) and Esteban (see his blog and slides here) for sharing their excellent perspectives and experiences as well. Below are... Continue reading

Next week I'll be moderating the latest in our series of "Social Media for Business" executive roundtable events in Cupertino CA on April 21. We have a great venue / host in HP, and I'm pleased that OutStart will be again be sponsoring and helping to organize the session. Since... Continue reading

Much has been written about the top brands and how they are using social channels to engage with customers - and in the case of the Altimeter/Wetpaint study from last summer - how "deep engagement" through social channels correlates with financial performance. Putting aside whether this relationship is causal or... Continue reading

Thanks for the read and comment Esteban! Per your question about users, in general "consumers" = passive users, and "contributors" = super-users. Mostly.
Where I think I am departing from the traditional view is that connectors are more than lurkers, and play a more active role recruiting members and bridging the other two camps. Also, in a couple recent engagements we saw a much different ratio than the 90-9-1 breakdown. Yes, the relative order of p > l > s held true, but there were a lot more connectors than we thought we'd find. And actually a lot more contributors as well. All perhaps a good sign and indication of the "health" of the specific communities we were studying.
Allen

Building and managing successful customer communities is both an art and a science. For starters, there has to be a natural need, or common interest among members – and value in both sharing content or experiences or expertise as a “contributor” and showing up to read or apply some of what is...

Building and managing successful customer communities is both an art and a science. For starters, there has to be a natural need, or common interest among members – and value in both sharing content or experiences or expertise as a “contributor” and showing up to read or apply some of... Continue reading

Hi Phil - thanks for the read and comments! I agree Twitter is easy to set up, and in *theory* it should be easy for big companies to get a lot of followers - but there are some pretty big companies in my analysis that haven't be able to (or haven't tried to) do just that - Pega, Chordiant and CDC come to mind.
I also agree/noted that individuals from these companies may be tweeting on their own - we both know lots of them! - but as an x-CMO and "brand guy" this may be where the action is but I wouldn't want those activities to be at the expense of the corporate brand/Twitter channel. Ideally the company has a strong corporate Twitter presence AND individuals who are also engaged, like SugarCRM for example.
Allen

Last time we looked at blogging best practices and which CRM vendors walk the walk when it comes to actively blogging. In this post I’ll share some highlights of how the same vendors are using Twitter to engage with their customers and the marketplace at large. But first, here are a few thou...

Last time we looked at blogging best practices and which CRM vendors walk the walk when it comes to actively blogging. In this post I’ll share some highlights of how the same vendors are using Twitter to engage with their customers and the marketplace at large. But first, here are... Continue reading